


Waiting by an open door

by mandydarlings



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, spoilers for archon ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 23:45:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10627680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandydarlings/pseuds/mandydarlings
Summary: Reyes Vidal waits for Sara Ryder.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the Kadara Port arc as well as the Archon ship.

The Tempest pulls into port and Reyes Vidal waits.

 

He has become a man who is used to waiting and waiting for the right moment to strike. He thinks he could time it to the exact moment that his Ryder walks through his door. It has been a strange thing, he thinks, being the Charlatan and taking over Kadara port. It gives him access to even more things he thought beyond his grasp but now he is a king of his own making and the most powerful piece of the board created has shared his ear and his bed.

 

She is the sun in his dark crevasses where he reigns in the shadows.  Not that he would tell her that.

 

Ryder is there. Reyes knows that for certain with the little mice that skitter cross his path and tell him stories. She is here on business with one of her shipmates. They all have moments with her, moments where they need her. It seems everyone always needs her, but they don’t ache for her like he does. It is a throbbing pulse that follows him with every step.

 

They carry with them the words and secrets he is frightened to utter against her skin in the darkness. Sloane’s arrogance and violence was her weakness, and he knows his has a more solid form, and a face he would die to protect as long as she would look at him with those wide blue eyes. The eyes said he could be any man he wished to be and accepted him with the ugly jagged bits that he was.

 

Days like this he felt like he was Icarus in love with the sun doomed to reach too high and fall with wings unfit to reach.

 

He swallowed his whiskey and waited.

 

Ryder did not come that night and Keema smiled at him knowingly. As if that stubborn Angara could feel the yearning inside him. She had called his affection for Ryder adorable and if she had been any one else he would have arranged for her to be left in the waters with the rest of the bodies.

 

He felt that he might find her at the bottom of the glass, not that he waited. Reyes Vidal, the Charltan, waits for no one.

 

Well, maybe waits for no one but her.

 

The morning comes in it’s harsh light of day and he finds Keema placing a bottle of water and some medicine on the stand by his cot. “Don’t get used to this.” She gives him a wary smile and a turn of her cigar as she leaves his bedroom. Not even Ryder would know to look for him here, and he wonders if she waits for him in that room in Tartarus like Persephone before the descent to Hades.

 

Reyes imagines her with flowers in her hair as the goddess of harvest and laughs. Ryder would sooner find herself accidently tripping over corn while stumbling into someone else to help. She would flash them that sweet smile of hers that said she meant well and his heart would crack open a tiny bit more and parts of him that he had thought he bottled up after Kia would come bleeding out with her unsteady hands.

 

She hasn’t come, but the ship is still in the port.

 

Reyes kept his word. Their settlement strives and every now and then shipment of medication or food finds its way to them in unmarked crates. He doesn’t charge them for protection fees when they reach port nor any threats of violence. What the settlement does not know is that there are his men watching their moves as well as several outposts in the area to protect them from Kett. They want for nothing, even if they don’t know it or who to thank. All thanks get given to Ryder just as Keema receives the gratitude for the port.

 

The difference is Keema can be the fall guy, but his Persephone is far more precious. She walks with the stars at her back and he loves her, loves her and loves her.

 

It has been three days since she had docked at the port and rumors of her all around Kadara were reaching his ears. _The queen has returned._ It fills him with pride when they refer to her as his. He knows he cannot claim ownership she is as much his as he is hers, perhaps even more so.

 

She comes into Tartarus and he sits in his room waiting in his dark throne behind the throne. He waits with the last bit of whiskey they had stolen together when she finally walks into the room. There is something different about her, something he cannot quite put his finger on. The easy joy that used to follow her everywhere has faded and she looks at him serious and as beautiful as a saint.

 

“Thanks for stopping by.” He says cool and calm raising his drink to his lips. His entire body screaming to touch her but he knows this game and her face says the flirty banter is the exact opposite of what she needs. He pats the seat next to him as she looks around the room like he isn’t even there. “Sara?” he tries her name and it breaks her out of whatever spell she had been under.

 

“Sorry,” She rubs the back of her neck absent mindedly. “Vetra took me out by the settlement and had me climb a mountain and I liked her enough that I didn’t use my jump jets.”

 

“The horror.” He smirks in a mocking tone and that seems to break her of whatever reverie she is in. Ryder sits down next to him in all her ungraceful glory.  “Sara...” he starts slowly as she looks at him with her big blue eyes. “Are you alright?”

 

“I guess?” She says with an edge to her voice that he can’t quiet pin point. He is good at reading people. Her body is tightly guarded as if was whittling down to a gravity point inside her. Reyes reaches out slowly and touches her shoulder and the shock of a touch breaks her out of whatever trance she was in. “Sorry… I should... I should go.” She moves to stand up and he grasps her hand.

 

“Sara…” He says her name like a prayer and she stops and turns to look at him. He can see it there beyond SAM and beyond the person she tries to be. There is Sara Ryder with the broken and jagged puzzle pieces that she desperately tries to hide, the ones that fit him so well. Reyes tugs at her arm and brings her back to him, next to his body, his warmth, and he can smell her hair as she sighs into it, allowing herself the physical comfort as he allows himself.

 

Carefully he intertwines his fingers with hers “Are you okay?” He asks softly with more tenderness than he meant as if that show of emotion may be betraying him more than the sound of his beating heart.

 

Sara’s head shakes and if he had been anyone else he might have missed it. He takes her small frame and wraps her into him, her light molding against him. She smells of all things good and sweet, of all the things his bloody hands and ambition do not deserve.

 

Her small body quakes against him and she breathes “I died. Again.” And he lets her fall into the despair and darkness as he holds his sun close.

 

Reyes whispers to her, “You are alive, Mi cariño, you are here with me. You are safe.  I would bring ruin to any who took you from me.” He says the words that he may have said to Kia but this time he knows they are true. He would burn Kadara or the universe to the ground from his throne of shadows if it ensured her safety.

 

Ryder looked up at him with the same adoration that she did on the top of roofs in simpler times and the knowledge of the weight of their decisions. The things that they both carry with them as he places his hand over her heart and her fingers touch his as if she cannot believe they are there.

 

A small laugh escapes her frame. It is a huff, a bit of breath, and a reaffirmation of life beyond. “My heart stopped in the Archon ship. It was the only way.. but.. I died.” She said not looking at him. “It was the right thing to do, but everything after that was just.. It came down between the Salarian pathfinder and Drack’s men.. and I just.. I panicked. I left some to die and… and… “ She shakes more than she means to, the tears reaching her eyes as he takes his hand s and holds her face so her bright blue eyes meet his golden ones.

 

“You did what you had to. “ He says simply in a way that he understands. “You made a choice for what you felt was the greater good.”

 

She looked away from his chest. “I wonder if my father made a mistake… He…”

 

“The only mistake you have made, Sara,” He says between a joke and fear “is having the worst taste in men.”

 

Sara smiles that small smile of hers that brings the sun in the depths of Tartarus. Reyes holds her close and the rest of the universe can wait.

 


End file.
